Shades of Murder Read online

  'There is one thing I can do,' Meredith told him. T can phone Juliet Painter and warn her. She's got an excuse to visit Fourways and check things out. I'll do it tonight.'

  She paused. 'I was going to phone her anyway. I've changed my mind, about my house.'

  She saw the alarm flood into his eyes. 'You've moving out? Going back to your place?'

  'No. I have decided to sell my place.' She waited.

  He said quietly, 'I don't want you to do this just to please me.'

  'That's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I want to show you I care. That I'm not half-hearted about us looking for a new home together. That I want - that I want this new stage in our relationship to work and I'm prepared to do my bit towards it.'

  Later, she moved her head on his shoulder and said, 'Today, for the first time, I told someone you were my partner.'

  'That's nice.' He smoothed her hair. 'Whom did you tell?'

  'How grammatical you are. I told Jan Oakley.'

  'Ah? In self-defence?' He was smiling, but the smile didn't reach his blue eyes.

  'Perhaps it was, but it won't be in future.' She said softly, T mean it, Alan.'

  He reached out and took her hand. T do know what a big step this is for you.'

  She squeezed his fingers. 'Funnily enough, it's not as difficult to make as I thought it would be. Dithering never helps, does it? It's always best to make up one's mind.'

  'For better or worse?' he asked quietly.

  'Getting married is a bigger step.' Meredith drew a deep breath. Tm making progress, Alan, but I need to do it in my own time.'

  So they left it at that, for the time being.

  Damaris Oakley toiled slowly up the winding staircase, steadying herself with a hand on the banister. The oak was worn as smooth as silk by the touch of countless other hands. Behind her came their visitor, his clumsy

  ANN GRANGER

  backpack bumping against the treads. She could hear his breath, was conscious of the scratching of the rucksack against the woodwork and the rustle of his clothing, the heat of his body and the smell of male sweat. It was as if some large wild beast crept up the staircase behind her. She had to fight back terror, an old. old terror which had resurfaced.

  When she and Florence had been small, a nursemaid had frightened them with stories of the bogeyman who lived in dark corners and jumped out at passing children. As a result, she and Florence and even Arthur, although he was a boy and knew he ought to be brave, would only go up and down the stairs together. Hands gripped for mutual reassurance, they'd peer fearfully into each shadowy corner, uttering squeals of dismay at each creak of the woodwork. At last their father had found out how-terrified his children were and had conducted an elaborate ceremony, involving raiding the dressing-up box, to banish the fiend.

  And now he was back. Perhaps, thought Damaris, he'd never really gone away at all. He hadn't been fooled by Papa in an Oriental dressing gown and a turban. He'd just been biding his time and here he was. No longer a shadow, but flesh and blood. Our flesh, she thought, and our blood. At the other end of a long life, she had to deal with him again. The bogeyman had become reality. He was there now, following her up the staircase as he'd followed two scared little girls nearly eighty years ago.

  They'd reached the corridor. She led him along it and opened the door. 'I've put you in the turret room. I hope you'll be comfortable. There is a bathroom just along there. The hot water is a little erratic. If you want to take a bath, let me know and I'll light the geyser for you. I wouldn't like to let anyone do it who wasn't used to it. It's got a mind of its own.'

  T expect I'll be able to manage it, dear cousin, if you'll just show me once how it's done.'

  The large dark eyes were fixed on her with a kind of gentle mockery. But Damaris was less affronted by that than by being hailed as his dear cousin. She didn't care if he blew himself sky-high with the geyser. But she wasn't his 'dear'. She could hardly bring herself to believe she was any sort of cousin.

  She knew he'd seen her wince and that it amused him. He wouldn't laugh aloud, he was too clever for that. She knew she was in the presence of someone who was very clever. She was aghast at the helplessness which swept over her at the realisation. How well equipped was she for the battle of minds which lay ahead? Although her own mental powers

  SHADES OF MURDER

  were in good shape, she knew that the brain of a woman of eighty-two must soon lag behind in a race with that of a man of whatever he was -twenty-nine, thirty? To her it seemed incredibly young. Yet there was about this young man something which was old. She couldn't quite be clear about what it was until she thought, Young in years and old in sin, and the expression seemed to explain it all.

  Am I being unfair? she asked herself with a pang of conscience. Am I blaming this person about whom I know nothing for something which happened a hundred years ago and which ought, in reality, to have been relegated to history long since. But how can you relegate something to the 'dustbin of history' when here it is, large as life, smiling at you from those luminous dark eyes?

  Clinging to everyday detail as if to a lifebelt, she said carefully, T ought to explain about meals. You'll take breakfast with us, of course, and perhaps lunch if you are here. But my sister and I don't eat an evening meal as such. We find we don't need it. We make ourselves something light, often just toast or a sandwich. So I've arranged for you to dine at The Feathers. It's a pub, two minutes' walk down the road. They know all about you. Just go in and tell the landlady, Mrs Forbes, who you are.'

  There was no way, she and Florence had decided immediately they knew he was coming, that they could cook for a man. Not with the old gas cooker playing up the way it did and the work and shopping involved. Mrs Forbes had been very understanding and helpful. She was a businesswoman, of course, and some hard bargaining had followed. Damaris's intuition told her that the cost of feeding Jan would fall on his hostesses. The same thinking had prevented her from booking Jan into The Feathers on a full bed and board basis. He was going to cost them money, but Damaris was determined it would be as little as possible. Jan would be provided with the cheapest thing on the bar menu for the evening (usually sausage and mash or a burger and chips). Damaris would be billed by Mrs Forbes when Jan left. If he wanted anything more elaborate, it would be made clear to him by Mrs Forbes there was an extra cost, to be paid from his own pocket, on the spot.

  'Dear Cousin Damaris—'

  He's doing it on purpose! thought Damaris. He's doing it because he knows I don't like it.

  'You'll find I won't be the slightest trouble to you. In fact, while I'm here, I can help you. Anything you need done, I'll be very happy to do it. I'm quite a handyman.'

  'We've got one,' said Damaris unkindly. 'We've got Ron Gladstone.'

  ANN GRANGER

  Jan was leaning towards her. his face now expressing only anxiety to please. She had an impulse, subdued with difficulty, physically to push him away.

  If Jan had heard her words, he gave no sign. He'd walked into the room. There was a gasp. He'd stopped in his tracks, struck by the sight before him. Damans smiled slightly to herself, a dry, bitter little smile.

  "The portrait!" The young man turned to her. eyes shining. T recognise him. I have an old photograph. It's—'

  'William Oakley,' said Damaris. She looked across the room at it. The sun had set almost completely and just a last ray of light touched the gilt frame with a pink finger. The frock-coated sitter stared out at them, handsome, unreliable, his dark gaze mocking, his red lips upturned in a half-smile without warmth. One hand was tucked inside his breast lapel in Napoleonic style, the other rested on a book.

  'My grandfather, but your great-grandfather. I remembered that portrait was stored somewhere about the house. I looked it out and dusted it off and put it in your room. I thought,' Damaris added, 'it seemed apt.'

  She left him to unpack and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Florence was there, cutting thin slices of bread in prepara
tion for their supper that evening which was to be Marmite sandwiches.

  'Everything all right?' Florence asked, setting down the breadknife which was so old and much-used that its blade had worn to something resembling a rapier.

  'All right' wasn't the phrase, thought Damaris. Everything was all wrong. The Oakley bad luck working its baneful effects to the last.

  'I've told him he's got to go to The Feathers if he wants any dinner' Damaris picked up the butterknife and prepared to set to work on the bread slices.

  'Perhaps he'll get fed up and leave soon,' said Florence optimistically. 'He'll be very bored. The food at The Feathers can't be good for the digestion, it all seems to be fried. As for the turret room, it's very cold even in the middle of summer.'

  'Let's hope so,' said Damaris grimly. 'Or something will have to be done.'

  SHADES OF MURDER

  It was likely to get warmer. The room was not large. The press box was a narrow single bench shielded by a low wooden wall, fixed to the side of the room at right angles to the rest of the benches which ran across the room side to side. It faced the jury benches across the room in a similar situation against the far wall. The witness box was to Stanley's left. In front and to the right of him, on the benches set across the room, facing the judge, sat counsel. Behind them was an empty row, half of which was partitioned off to form the dock. Behind this rose the grey-painted public benches in ascending ranks. They were rapidly being filled by said public, which was jostling its way through the entrance at the top of the room. Packed like sardines, jotted Stanley, and nearly as smelly.

  The public was at last seated, waiting, holding its breath in anticipation for the moment of drama. It came. Like the devil in a stage play popping up through a trapdoor, the defendant, William Oakley and his escort appeared, first their heads, then their bodies, up the narrow stair that gave access to the subterranean tunnel running between the prison and the courtroom. Oakley was led to his place in the dock, the heads of those seated above craning to look down on him. This was the man they'd come to see. This was the murderer! The escort took its seat on the remaining half of the row, forming a stiffly uncomfortable red-faced mass of heavy wool uniforms.

  Preliminaries were briskly completed, the defendant entering a plea of Not Guilty in ringing tones. There was undisguised satisfaction on the public benches. A plea of Guilty would have seen the whole proceedings despatched in minutes and everyone sent home, other than the condemned man and those who would escort him back through the tunnel to prison, and ultimately to his appointment with the hangman.

  Counsel for the prosecution, Mr Taylor, tall, thin, with an elongated neck, rose to his feet and clasped the front edges of his robes in either hand.

  'We're off!' murmured the Reuter's man.

  The courtroom held its collective breath.

  'Gentlemen of the jury,' Taylor began, 'we are here in the presence of a dreadful crime, dreadful in its concept and execution, and rendered more dreadful by the hand of Fate.'

  Good start, thought Stanley, scribbling. The old boy's got a nice turn of phrase.

  'The accused, William Oakley,' Taylor was saying, 'married a rich wife and during their marriage administered her money and kept an eye on her business interests. This was convenient for him, because he's a

  ANN GRANGER

  man who needs money, a gambler, a follower of the turf and a womaniser. Mrs Oakley had been very young, only eighteen, at the time of the marriage and was accustomed to defer to her husband's judgement. However, as the years went by, Mrs Oakley became aware of her husband's incessant philandering and, being now a mature lady in her thirties and not a girl of twenty, was resolved to do something about it. The final straw which broke the proverbial camel's back was an affair begun between the accused and the nursemaid, Daisy Joss.

  'Mrs Oakley made it clear she was prepared to indulge her husband no longer. Not only would she cease to make money available to pay his debts, she might even have come to consider a legal separation. It was then that William Oakley hatched a scheme to rid himself of his wife. It probably came to him during a routine visit to London Chemicals, a factory in which his wife had interests. Arsenic, that well-known and readily available poison, was used at the factory in the manufacture of rat poisons. Secretly to procure a small amount would be easy. But to poison his wife by the usual method, that is introducing it into her food, presented difficulties. He had no reason to visit the kitchen where the food was prepared. They shared the same meals, served by one of the maids. But at London Chemicals he was able to observe the way in which arsenic crystals are obtained from the ore, and was told that in the process, a highly toxic gas is produced. William Oakley, gentlemen, had found his means.

  'Having abstracted a small amount of arsenic ore from the factory, William Oakley now had to await his opportunity. It came soon enough. Following a painful dental extraction, his wife had asked him to bring laudanum from the pharmacy in Bamford. She would be taking it that night and under its influence first become drowsy and then sleep heavily. Oakley's plan was that his wife should die in that sleep and that the death would be attributed to another cause - namely, over-indulgence in the laudanum. Oakley's plan was as follows: once he was satisfied that his wife was in a drug-induced slumber, he would creep into her room and construct a primitive but working apparatus, using the heat from the bedside lamp to vaporise the arsenic. He would then leave the room, making sure windows and door were shut. His intention was to return later, his nose and mouth well muffled, throw open the windows to let out the smell of garlic caused by the vapour, remove the evidence, pour away much of the laudanum and then return to his own room and await the morning. By then, the tell-tale garlic odour would have disappeared. Mrs Oakley would be dead in her bed and the large amount of laudanum

  SHADES OF MURDER

  missing from a full bottle, purchased only that day, would indicate she had overdosed herself with the drug.'

  Taylor paused at this point. Checking the jury's reactions! thought Stanley. Taylor need not have worried. The whole courtroom hung on his every word.

  'Things didn't go to plan. Mrs Oakley had not taken so much laudanum that she was unaware of the odour of garlic filling the room. Or possibly, her husband, on closing the door as he left after setting up his dastardly apparatus, had disturbed her. She awoke, saw that something very strange was happening, and attempted to get out of bed. Alas, she was overcome by the vapour and fell, bringing down the lamp. That set alight her nightgown and, dying as she was from the effects of the toxic vapour, she could do nothing to save herself.

  'At this point, another thing unforeseen by William Oakley happened. The housekeeper Mrs Button arrived on the scene. She was unable to save her mistress but she did notice the smell of garlic, so typical of the process, and threw open a window to let it out. Had she not opened that window, gentlemen of the jury, it is possible the housekeeper might also have died from inhaling the dreadful vapour. You will also hear that she noticed foreign items amid the wreckage of the shattered lamp, although she had no way of knowing what their presence meant. We shall show that what Mrs Button saw was the remains of the apparatus set up by Oakley, also brought down in Mrs Oakley's fall.

  'The inquest on the death concluded that Cora Oakley had fallen while drugged and brought down the lamp, dying of burns and shock. Defence will doubtless seek to make much of the fact that Mrs Button said nothing to contradict this at the time, only later when she had been dismissed from Mr Oakley's service. Mr Oakley must indeed have disliked seeing daily a woman who had witnessed incriminating evidence of his crime. He may have suspected the housekeeper had noticed the smell and seen the remains of his devilish device and was puzzling over them. Mrs Button had indeed been worried; once dismissed, and feeling herself released from any obligation to her former employer, she went to Mrs Oakley's parents. They had never been satisfied with the manner of their daughter's death and set in train the events which brought William Oakley to be in the dock
today.'

  Neatl scribbled Stanley. But you've got to prove it, old son

  SHADES OF MURDER

  obliged. At last he was able to drag it open sufficiently to allow him to squeeze through.

  'Phew!' he muttered, taking out a handkerchief to mop his brow. 'Wonder when that was last opened!'

  He edged through the gap. It took a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. The air was stale and damp, smelling of earth and decay. There were windows all along one wall. They were hung with cobwebs so thick and huge they might have been heavy lace curtains. The cracked and broken panes were encrusted with dirt. The shrubs outside had grown up hard against them, poking twig fingers through gaps and invading the shed with greenery. As a result, next to no daylight seeped through by this route. The main source of light was the hole in the roof. It revealed to Ron's bemused gaze a time capsule of long-ago gardening activities and all of it covered with a layer of thick dust and more strings of cobweb. The floor was of beaten earth, muddy in the centre beneath the gap in the roof. Utensils were propped against the walls or were stacked in corners. Beneath the windows ran a long bench covered with broken earthenware flowerpots, seedtrays, yellowed seedpackets, dried out scraps of vegetable matter. A collection of what looked at first glance like pebbles turned out, on inspection, to be the dried speckled remains of runner bean seeds. Ron picked up one of the flowerpots and a trickle of earth, dried to the consistency of finest dust, ran out. He felt as though he'd broken open a tomb. Unlike Howard Carter, however, he wasn't faced with 'wonderful things' but only junk.

  'Been a potting shed,' he observed again aloud to himself.

  He turned round. Against the back wall stood an extraordinary-looking mechanical contraption, rusted into immobility, a cross between a dogcart and a lawnroller and he realised that was exactly what it was - a roller designed to be drawn by a pony.